He is a graduate of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He has been called "something more akin to James Bond than a top civil servant", and his nickname in his previous appointment as permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Skills was ‘the smiling assassin’. He is also described as ‘extremely charming’, ‘civilised and urbane’ – and a ‘tough nut’. One of Normington's lasting legacies in the DfES was his decision to reduce the Department's workforce by approximately a third, made in 2003. This decision came in advance of the subsequent budget announcing a large reduction of the civil service as a whole, leading some to speculate that Normington had made his own cuts early in an attempt to curry favour. He applied for the job of Cabinet Secretary but was beaten by Sir Gus O'Donnell. [1]

The arrest of opposition MP Damian Green

He was responsible for initiating the investigation that ended with the police arresting shadow immigration minister Damian Green, allegedly because Green told the press that the government had given licenses to illegal workers, that an illegal worker was employed in the Houses of Parliament, and two more documents. [3]

The complaint was dismissed by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), [4] after MP's concluded that "that growing frustration in both the Home Office and the Cabinet Office may have led officials to give an exaggerated impression of the damage done by the leaks that could reasonably be presumed to have emanated from the Home Office" [5].